La Guitarra

November 9, in Norton at the Church of St Mary the Virgin [TS20 1EJ]
La Guitarra – a performance with a strongly Spanish choral theme – welcomes the reappearance on Teesside of Jonathan Parkin,  a classical guitarist now working from Spain. Jonathan will deliver up to 15 minutes of solo guitar as interlude in each of the concert’s two parts and will accompany the Singers at the outset in the song Con amores, la mi madre [Juan De Anchieta (1462-1523) arranged by Bob Chilcott (2007)] followed by the suite Romancero gitano. The suite is the major work for this performance and was created in 1950 by Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco, famed among composers of Hollywood film scores.  His music sets seven of the poems in a book of that title that had secured the international reputation of  Granada’s Federico Garcia Lorca in 1928. The poems, inspired by the gypsy ballads of the Spanish countryside, make a heady mix of passion, infatuated dance and regional pride.